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Study: Melanoma Rates May Not Be Increasing
Monday, 28 September 2009 16:27
A recent British study is questioning the allegations that melanoma incidences are increasing. They have found that the increase could be caused by a shift in diagnosis - more doctors are removing lesions and calling them as melanomas, rather than more incidences of melanoma actually occuring. Data collected by doctors from Norfolk and Norwich University shows that 'thick' melanomas and melanoma mortality are not increasing, but rather doctors are removing more 'thin' lesions and are calling them melanomas. This means that doctors are removing lesions which are not truly cancerous and were not detectable in the past.
“The large increase in reported incidence is likely to be due to diagnostic drift which classifies benign lesions as stage 1 melanoma,” the group wrote in the paper, “Melanoma epidemic: A midsummer night’s dream” which was published a few weeks ago in the British Journal of Dermatology. “These findings should lead to a reconsideration of the treatment of ‘early’ lesions, a search for better diagnostic methods to distinguish them from truly malignant melanomas, re-evaluation of the role of ultraviolet radiation and recommendations for protection from it, as well as the need for a new direction in the search for the cause of melanoma.”
The group also pointed out, “There are important additional consequences of the diagnostic drift that our findings have indicated,” the authors wrote. “It may have resulted in unnecessary excisions, health care and insurance costs, let alone the problems and anxieties given to patients and their families.”
Click here to learn more about the shift in melanoma diagnosis - more cases but less mortality...
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